Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. 'Tis more plain, that this was the sin of Adam. The first act of Adam was to exercise a Lordship over the lower Creatures, in giving names to them, a token of Dominion. Gen. 2.19. The next was, to affect a Lordship over God, in rebelling against him; After he had writ the first mark of his own delegated Dominion in the names he gave the Creatures, and owned their dependence on him as their Governor, he would not acknowledge his own dependence on God. As soon as the Lord of the World had put him into possession of the power he had allotted him, he attempted to strip his Lord of that, which he had reserved to himself; He was not content to lay a yoke upon the other Creatures, but desirous to shake off the Divine Yoke from himself, and be subject to none but his own will; Hence Adam's sin is more particularly called disobedience: Rom. 5.19. For in the eating the apple, there was no Moral evil in it self, but a contradiction to the positive command and order of God; whereby he did disown Gods right of commanding him, or reserving any thing from him to his own use. The Language all his Posterity speaks, Let us break his bands, and cast away his cords from us, Psal. 2.3. was learned from Adam in that act of his. The next act we read of, was that of Cain's murdering Abel, which was an invading God's right, in assuming an Authority to dispose of the Life of his Brother, a Life which God had given him, and reserved the period of it in his own hands. And he persists in the same usurpation, when God came to examine him, and ask him where his Brother was, how scornful was his answer? Gen. 4.9. Am I my Brother's Keeper? as much as if he had said, what have you to do to examine me? or what obligation is there upon me, to render an account of him? Or as one saith,^* 'Tis as much as if he had said, go look him your self. The Sovereignty of God did not remain undisturbed as soon as ever it appeared in Creation, the Devils rebelled against it in Heaven, and man would have banished it from the earth.

3. 'Tis more plain, that this was the sin of Adam. The first act of Adam was to exercise a Lordship over the lower Creatures, in giving names to them, a token of Dominion.